Mickey and Minnie

Mickey and Minnie have found their place at home.

Thank you

I left from work "early" today - about 45 minutes earlier than usual - to fetch our thank-you cards from the same company that provided us with the whole set of our wedding stationeries. This was not on my agenda this morning and as usual things - urgent, of course - come when you have something else planned. I arrived just in time, about 2 minutes before the showroom closed its door, drowned in my own sweat due to the last-hundred-meter sprint but I made it!

Aside from that, we still have not sorted out our guests' pictures from the more-than-1000 pictures Luc made and they need to be printed to accompany our thank-you cards! We know what waits us this weekend...

Michel et Augustin

Our favor for the children, a small cute box of sablés - French butter cookies - from Michel et Augustin got featured on their blog.

I was so happy - I was not supposed to but I was so glad that we made a good choice - when the children decided to start their dinner with our sablés right after they were seated and set their eyes on it.

The box being already cute, we only added a simple knot of dark green satin ribbon, a small biologic reglisse - wooden branch used to make French-traditional candy - stick, and our printed thank-you message. My husband loved to munch those sticks when he was a kid and we figured that it would also be the case for these children.

(Real) wedding album online

We went to see Luc, our photograph, to get our complete wedding pictures yesterday evening. We enjoyed our discussion as usual with him - perhaps a bit too much for my husband - that in the end I had to drag him out of Luc's appartment.

Luc had already passed us about 30 or so "sample" pictures he took on our wedding day and so we knew what we were waiting for. I had so much fun looking at them and trying to pick our best shots - there are a few hundreds of them to be sorted out and they are all so georgeous that we had a hard time - that we went to sleep very late, we just did not see the time pass.

I have just put them online and shared with our friends, already reclaiming for it for the past 2 weeks.

Sample

Waiting for our wedding pictures for almost three weeks was becoming unbearable. We called Luc last Saturday morning to wake him up a bit and he asked us to wait until mid-week. He did send me a "sample" - I thought that samples were only given in perfume shops - album today with (only) about 35 photos in it. It is worth the wait, they are all breathtakingly beautiful!

I put it online and I got some mails right away. Everyone is charmed by our "sample" album and just can not wait to see the rest.

Caught in the act

Our wedding is featured on DNA - Alsatia's leading regional newspaper - today. We were not expecting it but as my mother-in-law held an important role in the town council this must be a good reason.

Photos donation

Our wedding is still very recent - not even a week old - but yet I feel a sort of longing to go back and live that day once again. Everything happened so fast and I am affraid to miss some seconds of the beautiful day. I wish that Luc could have done the pictures faster but I know that we would not have our pictures ready before 2 or 3 weeks time since he told us that he is booked full until July 14th and even then we are not his only clients waiting for his pictures.

My parents got very impatient. They have their flight back to Indonesia on July 16th and never in the world would they accept to go back empty-handed without our pictures.

God bless our friends who kindly sent us their best shots since the last couple of days, even without us asking them to. We ordered a print for my parents - so they give us some peace since they will have it in a day or two - and we set up a shared album online. That would help the wait.

Back on Earth

Last saturday rush

Champagne arrival

My future mother-in-law received our wedding champagne, 9 boxes of 6 bottles, with the label we chose.

We were so excited when we saw those bottles and then I just realized how close the wedding was.

Personalized champagne

The champagne producer we took for our wedding offered us personalized label for free. We sent the model and the text we wanted.

Labours weekend

This year's labours day fell on a Thursday and we took advantage of it by taking our Friday off and go back to Alsatia to continue the organization work on our fast-coming wedding. A real labours weekend.

Thursday - We hit the road at dawn to avoid Paris traditional traffic jam for the coming long weekend - most Parisians did the same as us but for a long resting weekend instead of a long marathon weekend.

Friday -

Saturday -

Sunday -

Friday Night Fever

My Parisian Wedding

Last minute

Shop 'til you drop

Viennese waltz

I made an appointment for a session of waltz course with a dance teacher I found on the internet last year.

My husband-to-be was not really enthousiastic about dancing and certainly not interested in taking a dance lesson but I do not want him walking on my feet or on my dress and there is no way we could avoid the traditional ball opening by the bride and the groom, so I did not really give him a choice. "This is just to save our dignity, okay", he obeyed me then.

I just hoped that the teacher would be very patient because it would take a lot of sweat just to make my future husband follow the rythm.

Civil wedding dress

When a good friend of mine living in the Netherlands who got married last year in Thessalonica told me a secret behind her georgeous wedding dress and accessories as being bought from the Internet and eBay, I could not help myself from browsing eBay for such a good deal.

This dress finally hooked me. I ordered for it though the total cost is not so cheap for a dress made in China. The only minor note was the delay, I calculated that I would have it two weeks before the event at worst but on eBay you should consider it as "at best" instead of "at worst". So it was sort of a gamble for me. It was in early March.

Sometime after, a month to be precise, preceded by series of mail ranging from insisting to harassing - I was beginning to be desperate! - I finally received my dress. The fabrics was a bit disappointing - I do not think they use the same fabrics as the photo they put on eBay and I was expecting something better for the price I payed - but the style is faithful to the description. But what really annoyed me, the dress size is not written anywhere and it was too big for me despite the French size 34 - equivalent to their US size 0 - I asked.

In a moment like this, I must admit that I was so grateful that my mother had forced me to learn how to sew when I was a lot younger though then I did not really appreciate it. I shrunk the dress size myself and after two evening labour it was ready for my big day.

Patience is gold

After dozens of corrections - and a huge dose of patience - through a week of e-mailing, we could finally give a go-ahead for our wedding invitations to be printed.

Joseph Mann

We were supposed to have our 2nd preparation session with our two priests the coming weekend so I made an attempt to call Joseph Mann, the Catholic priest I had not met yet. He was not there and I left a message.